We closed shop for a week of summer vacation last week. Our L260 was in sleep mode for the week. Came back and we printed a couple poster jobs and the colors are very muted. Changed out the YW/BK printhead and it got slightly better. All of the other printheads are relatively new (less than 200 ml fired). Ran the clean printhead several times. And printed test plots. The color still looks washed out. We were printing fine before we left. Is it a printhead issue? Should we replace the C/LC & M /LM as well?
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Print quality on L260
- Thread starter tgraphic
- Start date
P Wagner
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Each of the HP Latex 200-series and 300-series machines that I have had dating back to 2010, have been used exclusively for training, and regularly sit without being used for days and even on occasion, weeks at a stretch. The Latex machines are built to go into sleep mode, and not to be power cycled on a daily basis.
There are several things that could be going on here. The first thing, as the OP noted, is nozzle-performance related. With the Latex printers, sometimes nozzle issues do not result in the typical horizontal banding seen on other machines, but can manifest as color shifts in the output. The first thing would be to run the Printhead Test Print (from the printer control panel; Ink Menu > Image Quality Maintenance > Clean PH > Test Print.)
Based on your evaluation of that print, run cleanings on the affected color(s) and heads only.
After that, I would run a print job of Pure Hue colors (multiple large rectangles of C,M,Y,K ink only) with all color management disabled, and see if dropouts develop anywhere in the print. There is a phenomenon with Latex called Color Enrichment, which can cause color shifts at the start of a print, and this test should tell if this is occurring, as well as check nozzle performance in a print job. If a problem develops, run another clean cycle or replace the PH.
If all is good after these steps, you should be good to go with print production going forward.
There are several things that could be going on here. The first thing, as the OP noted, is nozzle-performance related. With the Latex printers, sometimes nozzle issues do not result in the typical horizontal banding seen on other machines, but can manifest as color shifts in the output. The first thing would be to run the Printhead Test Print (from the printer control panel; Ink Menu > Image Quality Maintenance > Clean PH > Test Print.)
Based on your evaluation of that print, run cleanings on the affected color(s) and heads only.
After that, I would run a print job of Pure Hue colors (multiple large rectangles of C,M,Y,K ink only) with all color management disabled, and see if dropouts develop anywhere in the print. There is a phenomenon with Latex called Color Enrichment, which can cause color shifts at the start of a print, and this test should tell if this is occurring, as well as check nozzle performance in a print job. If a problem develops, run another clean cycle or replace the PH.
If all is good after these steps, you should be good to go with print production going forward.